‘Look, Bethany. I don’t know what you’re playing at. Or why you’ve decided to start sniffing around again. Don’t you think you’ve done enough meddling already? Put your sister through enough? Done enough damage to my career?’ He’s looking at me as if I’m nothing more than a piece of shit on the bottom of his shoe.
What did this Bethany do to make him hate her so much?
The rational part of my brain knows it isn’t me he’s angry with. That I havepersonallydone nothing wrong. But looking at the way he’s appraising me makes me feel … well … fragile. Desperate. Alone. Alone to flounder through world after world, floating in a sea of flotsam, being dragged to shore and then tossed back out to sea over and over again as the very edges of who I am are sloughed off, lost to time and space as if I am nothing more consequential than a piece of broken bottle buffeted for a century.
I can feel the tears are wet on my face but I just don’t care any more. I don’t care what he thinks of me.
‘Hey.’ This time his voice is softer and he takes a step closer to me. ‘Hey. I didn’t mean … Bethany?’
But I can barely hear him as I feel my heart break in my chest. And I don’t mean that figuratively. I mean literally, I can feel my heart rate turn erratic, a pain shooting through my left arm. The edges of my vision are turning black, the darkness encroaching second by second. I think I’m going to be sick.
Chapter Thirty
I wake up to find Tyler’s concerned face peering down at me. There’s something cold and hard under my back. Where am I? I drift away, lulled to sleep by the soothing motion of the floor moving beneath me. Am I on a ship? No. That makes no sense at all.
There’s something covering my nose and mouth and I try to rip it off as I simultaneously attempt to sit up. A heavy pair of hands pushes me back down before trying to peel my fingers off the thing on my face. I try to fight, but they’re stronger than me.
‘Bethany? Bethany? You’re okay,’ a stranger’s voice says. Well, that’s a red flag, isn’t it? ‘Bethany? Please hold still. You’re in an ambulance. Who’s the prime minister?’
‘Keir Starmer,’ I reply. There’s a pause. And then I panic. What if he isn’t prime minister here?
‘What month is it?’
‘August.’
‘What’s your address?’
‘Flat 2C, 110 Nightingale Road.’
There’s a pause in the questions. I think that’s the wrong answer. My address but not this Bethany’s. She lived in Lambeth, or was it Southwark? Even through the haze of whatever drugs they’ve given me I know I need to be morecareful. I’m treading a fine line between ‘just passed out for some benign reason’ and ‘maybe she has a brain tumour’. Notwithstanding the possibility of a psychotic break. I squeeze my eyes shut. What if they try to put me in an asylum somewhere? What happens then?
‘Do you know what happened, Bethany?’ another stranger asks me, but at least they sound calm and in control and nice. Like they might actually try to help me and not lock me away for my own protection.
‘I fainted,’ I reply.
‘We think you had a panic attack. But a bad one. Your friend thought you were having a heart attack.’
I want to tell the voice that Tyler is not my friend, but that feels somewhat irrelevant and kind of churlish if I’m honest.
I wake up in a small room that smells of disinfectant and lemon and something not quite right, like a warning deep down on a primal level. I must be in hospital. I try to move my head to look around me but nothing works, my body unresponsive to my brain. Panic bubbles in my stomach until I force myself to take a deep breath and calm down. I was in an ambulance. I had a panic attack.
Okay. Breathe in. Breathe out. It’s all okay. I’m in hospital. I just had a panic attack. They must be keeping me in for observation. Isn’t that what always happens on TV?
So why can’t I move my head?
The panic bubble bursts and I can feel adrenaline rush my system, crashing over me in waves as the panic builds. An alarm in my ear raises in pitch.
I open my eyes and a worried face swims into focus. But then a prick of darkness at the corner of my vision bloomslike an ink drop in water and the black envelops me, dragging me down. I’m too weak to swim against it.
Eventually I force myself back to the surface. This time the lights in the room are dim, casting a macabre shadow across the ceiling like a nightmarish puppet show. Slowly, careful not to cause myself to panic again, I rotate my head. This time my body responds and I find myself staring at a pale blue paper curtain. I turn the other way and locate a bedside cabinet. There’s a plastic glass of water and it looks like the most inviting thing I’ve ever seen. Why am I so thirsty?
‘You’re awake,’ a voice says from just beyond the bottom of the bed.
I bite down some kind of witty retort – the witty possibly being subjective – and instead say yes. Or at least that’s what I try to do. Instead my voice comes out in a high-pitched screech, like a newborn kitten. Ooh, that doesn’t sound good.
‘Let’s get you a drink, shall we, lovely?’
I nod, already picturing the ice-cold water sliding down my burning throat.
